Martin Matishak, The Fiscal Times

The war against the Islamic State has now cost American taxpayers
more than $7 billion, a figure that could increase dramatically as the
U.S. prepares to send 200 more troops to Iraq to help fight the
extremist network. As of March 15, the price tag for 568 days of war was $6.8 billion,
with an average cost of $11.5 million per day, according to a Defense
Department report released on Tuesday. If the daily tab has held steady
since then, another $402.5 million can be added to the sum, putting the
total over $7.2 billion.

Given the Obama administration’s airpower-first approach to battling
ISIS it’s not surprising that daily flight operations accounted for 48
percent of the war’s cost, or about $3.2 billion.

http://heraldsun.com.au – At
9pm on the evening of April 6 Sally Faulkner was sitting between the
two single beds in a small one bedroom “safe house’’ in the shelled out
poor area of Sabra in Beirut, desperately ringing the Australian embassy
in Lebanon. On the first try no one answered. On the second, a security
official said to ring back the following morning when the office was
open. Plans to be quickly rescued by Australian officials — and getting
some assistance to escape Lebanon — evaporated throughout the night.

How
different the saga of the past fortnight may have played out if
Faulkner had managed to get inside the embassy grounds and obtain some
limited diplomatic protection for her children. Instead, on this
first evening back with their mother in nearly a year, Faulkner’s
children, five year old Lahela and three year old Noah were sleeping
peacefully in the safe house.

by Josie Ensor,



Beirut – Mystery surrounds the death of a Briton in Lebanon after he was found
dead under suspicious circumstances in a town near the Syrian border. Lee Harrison, 35, was discovered hanged at a house in Deir al-Ahmar in the eastern Bekaa region.

Police had initially treated it as a suicide, but doctors examining
his body said they believed he had “not commit suicide or died of
natural causes”, suggesting a murder could have been covered up. He was said to have visited a friend on Wednesday in the nearby town of Iaat before travelling on to Deir al-Ahmar. Reports suggested he had been in Lebanon for 10 days before his death.

Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Wednesday, 20 April 2016 Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe has angered several of her fans after she posted a picture of herself wearing what appears to be headscarf and revealing dress. The singer’s studio-shot picture, that was posted on her Facebook page, shows the singer posing with her hair covered in […]

BEIRUT
(AP) — An Australian mother and TV crew detained in Beirut amid a
botched attempt to take the woman’s two children from their Lebanese
father were released on bail Wednesday, in a dramatic climax to a
high-profile child custody battle that has spanned two continents.

Ali
al-Amin, the father of the two children, aged 3 and 5, announced he has
dropped attempted kidnapping charges against his estranged Australian
wife Sally Faulkner and the Channel 9 TV crew, because he “didn’t want
the kids to think I was keeping their mother in jail.” Lawyers and the judge involved in the case would not comment about whether any compensation was involved. Faulkner
and the four-person TV crew, led by prominent Australian TV journalist
Tara Brown, left a jail in Baabda, a Beirut suburb, in a white van,
escorted by an Australian Embassy car. Once inside the vehicle they
embraced one another.

BBC News, A Lebanese man whose estranged
Australian wife has been charged with attempting to kidnap their
children has said he will not drop the charges.

The two children were allegedly snatched off a Beirut street earlier this month at their mother’s behest. The operation was being filmed by four Australian journalists with Channel 9’s 60 Minutes programme. The mother, Sally Faulkner, was soon arrested, as were the journalists, two British men and two Lebanese men. The children were returned to their father’s custody.

The judge overseeing the case has warned that he views the “child recovery” operation as a criminal case. ‘This is not a custody case’ Ms
Faulkner had said she had not seen the young children since her
estranged husband, Ali al-Amin, took them from Australia to Beirut on
holiday.

BBC By Hugh Sykes

Beirut is an essential listening
post for journalists and diplomats trying to work out what is happening
in Syria, and what may happen there next. The Syrian capital,
Damascus, is 85 miles (137km) from Beirut. You can still get there by
taxi. For $150 (£105). But unless you are willing to submit to (or
perilously dodge) the severe restrictions of Syrian intelligence, there
is little point.

A common belief in Beirut is that President
Bashar al-Assad and his army, supported by Russian air strikes, will
move on from driving the so-called Islamic State group out of Palmyra –
and defeat them all the way to their headquarters in Raqqa. Several
Beirut analysts I met believe Western nations have reached the
reluctant (and so far unannounced) conclusion that the least-worst
option for Syria is that Bashar al-Assad should stay on as president –
supported by Russia and Iran, and by Hezbollah.

By Benjamin Zhang

The Mercedes-Maybach S600 is one of the finest luxury limos money can buy. The Maybach name returned last year after a brief hiatus as the
flagship model of Mercedes’ S-Class line instead of a standalone brand.

Now Mercedes has a new armored version of the Maybach called the “Guard” edition. According to Mercedes, the Maybach Guard is the first civilian vehicle to be certified with VR10-level ballistics protection.  That means the Maybach’s body and windows are designed to withstand hardened-steel-core bullets fired from assault rifles.  And that’s exactly what they did. The company published a photo of a
bullet-riddled test car this week, complete with markers to identify
each bullet hole.